We're All Make Believe Now
by kikis2
Summary: OT3 angst to "The Last Day on Earth". Futurefic where no ones happy, and no ones sure who to blame. C/B, C/S.


**A/N: Can't write much 'cause uni totally kills my soul. This is nowhere leading ramblings. Go on, see how depressed the thought of having to attend Asia-Pacific Security makes me.**

**A/N2: The song is "The Last Day on Earth" by Kate Miller Heidke. Check it out :)**

_The ground below is crumbling.  
Look up,  
The stars are all exploding.  
Hey yeah, hey yeah oh  
Hey yeah, hey yeah_

_2025_

It was easier to stay at the office. Easier to have his secretary make his apologies. And the man he'd become chose _easy_every damn time.

He ate at the same restaurant he always did. It was relatively new. There were no memories here. No macaroons. No truffle oil.

He thought about that brown leather bag, hidden in the dark edges of his closet. He thought about easing through his bedroom, past his sleeping wife. He'd grab the bag and run so damn far there wasn't a memory that could find him.

He slid into the crowd of Victrola with an ease born of not caring. He tilted his head back onto the lounge, dark eyes narrowing to slits. In the dark with the blue lights casting deep shadows, the woman on the stage could almost be someone he remembered. He let himself see the sashay of russet waves and nothing else. He let himself pretend.

But the illusion...It never lasted. He blinked, and the curvy body on stage brushed away the last cobwebs of his daydreams. He fled the club on shaky legs. It always ended this way. With his throat tight and thoughts of his life an arctic breeze of reality.

_It's the last, day on earth,  
In my dreams, in my dreams,  
It's the end, of the world,  
And you've come back, to me.  
In my dreams._

Chuck threw open the door to his bedroom. He flipped the light switch on, without a thought for the slumbering body, curled into a ball on his bed. An open bottle of oxazepam lay by her side. She wouldn't wake up.

She never did.

He rubbed a rough hand over his face, trying to find the energy for a shower. He pictured his wife's reaction to the smell of smoke and inexpensive perfume. Her once loose waves would be pulled into a tight bun, her smile cool and tight—a perfect replica of her mother's. She'd hiss a sarcastic _you really shouldn't work so hard_. It woke him up enough to pad into the bathroom.

Hair still wet, he stumbled to Serena's side, sitting heavily on the edge of the bed. Deeply ingrained habit made him check the prescription on her pills, made him count the pills and calculate the dates. The same ingrained habit made him sweep silky golden hair out of Serena's face and place a gentle kiss on her brow.

He liked her asleep. Her features soft and relaxed, without any trace of the aches she carried around. Asleep she couldn't hate him. Asleep she couldn't use those long legs to escape his touch. Closed eyes couldn't accuse him of having women, of taking her, of destroying the greatest friendship she'd ever had.

When he shut his eyes they were both there. Not the fractured pieces he possessed in reality. But the beautiful girls, perfect and unbroken by his clumsy tongue and heart's greed.

But, they too disappeared when his eyes blinked open.

He brought Serena her coffee in a cheap mug with a picture of the Côte d'Azur on its side. For just a shining second she'd grinned, brilliant and heart stopping. It was the smile she'd once worn perpetually and it was all the more beautiful for its rarity now.

_Between,  
The dust and the debris.  
There's a light,  
Surrounding you and me.  
Hey yeah, hey yeah oh oh  
Hey yeah, hey yeah_

They'd only had three years of happiness.

Blair had gone to France to turn her mother's company into a label people would die to design for. Nate had been sent to some mayor's office down south where people still cared about old money and Republican values.

Serena and Chuck had turned to each other as if it was the most natural thing on earth. There was no big decisions, or thought. They just slipped into each other with too much heat and the type of understanding that most couples would never touch.

They hadn't realised what they'd risked, not even at their wedding with Blair's anger haunting every kiss. They'd honeymooned at the Côte d'Azur and he thought he'd escaped it. Thought he'd shed his father's cool indifference, thought he'd found a way around the drama and lies that cloaked the Upper East Side.

He and Serena found a way to laugh at the people around them, to laugh at themselves and, despite their childhoods, they'd managed to create something happy and healthy.

_It's the last, day on earth,  
In my dreams, in my dreams,  
It's the end, of the world,  
And you've come back, to me.  
In my dreams._

Blair came back. For good this time. And the morning of his and Serena's first anniversary had been spent scrubbing the scent of Blair's Givenchy off his skin.

It had been a war. A cold war, maybe. It was all silence and muffled blows to egos that couldn't hold any more scars. Blair and Serena, for all their previous treaties, forgot their own rules, hadn't remembered that there was more to lose than a husband or lover.

After months of unfriendly fire he'd ended up on Blair's Park Avenue doorstep, a hastily packed holdall in his hands.

It only lasted two weeks, but Serena never forgot. None of them did.

He was not even certain what Serena blamed him for now. He still had the occasional indiscretion and Serena didn't even bat an eye. That perfect, socialite smile wouldn't waver for even a second. She was beyond that now. Her anger was so deep he couldn't even see its roots. Was it for loving her? For loving Blair? _For loving either of them_,_both of them, too little, too much_?

For all of it, probably. But most of all Serena blamed herself. For making a year of her and Blair's life about a competition for a boy they'd both loved, for a boy who loved them both, instead of remembering that they'd loved each other first and best.

There was no going back. There were no more chances. She never had time to say sorry to Blair, so it somehow felt right that she'd never give Chuck forgiveness.

_And you hold me closer than I,  
Can ever remember being held,  
And I'm not, afraid to sleep now,  
If we can stay like this until._

He and Serena had stood in the corner of a hospital room after Blair's second fainting spell. Well, the second that they knew of.

A bad heart, they'd said.

_Had he done that?_

Her left ventricle was irreparably damaged and a transplant was her only option.

Serena had let out a small whimper. They both knew. It didn't matter that Blair was only twenty-nine. There was ipecac in her medicine cabinet and so no new heart for Blair.

Serena clutched at his hand, but everything in her seemed to edge towards the body of her still sleeping best friend.

His sins were forgotten with Serena's tears. She buried herself in his arms, somehow finding a shred of the optimism she'd once possessed to believe in him again. She believed his promises of blackmailed hospital directors and a new paediatrics wing.

She spent every free hour at Blair's side and it was so close to the way it should be.

Serena chattered soft and happy, twirling dark strands around her finger. "And we can do Christmas in France this year. I'll cook! And Chuck can make eggnog."

_We'll be together. I'll do anything. Share anyone._

Blair's smile was perfect, unmarred by her fragile condition, softened by the warmth of her friend. "But I have to look after Waldorf Designs, S. We'll try next year."

_There's too much between us now. Maybe if we had more time_.

_It's the last, day on earth,  
In my dreams, in my dreams,  
It's the end, of the world,  
And you've come back, to me.  
In my dreams.  
Hey yeah, hey yeah oh oh  
Hey yeah, hey yeah_

He'd done everything he could. He made doctors forget years of instability and eating disorders. He'd gotten her a new heart. Unmarred by illness and disappointment.

But it wasn't enough.

_Nothing would have been_.

So he stood uncomfortably by her bedside, even when she asked him not to. Even as the linen wrapping her tiny body screamed of ghosts and the need to flee. He'd made sure that every day was as painful for him as it was for her.

Blair talked about them only once. Her eyes were distant and her mouth twisted into harsh lines. "It wasn't insanity, was it? I thought that somehow, somewhere, the world had messed up. Given me the wrong life. Given you the wrong wife."

He wanted to say something. _I loved you first_. _I would have chosen you, but there was no choice, just a life I never wanted and always needed_. But his mouth froze with his heart.

"I'm sorry." Not enough. Never enough.

Blair's smile was an unhappy acknowledgement of his inadequate words. "But the world wasn't wrong, Chuck. We were."

She'd never apologized to Serena, never forgave her either. Not that either of them needed the words.

But there was this. The small knowledge that Serena and Chuck were real. Not just fates one big fuck-up.

The heart they'd given her wasn't nearly good enough for her body and they'd buried Blair on a cold, grey day.

Maybe the sun was shining in the middle of summer, but Serena's face had been dull and colourless and he'd never felt quite so cold in his life. The weather man must have gotten it wrong.

_In my head I play your conversations,  
Over and over 'til they feel like hallucinations,  
You know me, I love to lose my mind.  
And everytime anybody speaks your name,  
I still feel the same, I ache, I ache, I ache inside._

He spent another night in a lonely restaurant, and an even lonelier hour stroking the russet locks of the burlesque dancer he seduced.

It was nearly one by the time he got home. The mug he'd bought was in pieces—lost in one of Serena's fits of outrage.

The beach they'd been so happy at was just dust on his dining room floor.

He headed to his closet, pulling out the bag he'd never unpacked. He didn't look at Serena's resting form. It was easy when he couldn't see her. Then he could tell himself that it was better to be away, to forget them both.

He remembered the first time, when he'd had somewhere to go. Somewhere he wanted to be. It was all fear and excitement, anger and just the smallest edge of hope. There was none of that now. Nothing at all.

Nate made it to his door, flinging it open without a thought for his half-naked body.

He didn't say a word when Chuck slipped past him wordlessly. They opened a bottle of whiskey and finished it on the lounge.

"I can't go back." _Not when there's nothing left to go back to_.

Nate just emptied his glass. Chuck and Serena had already destroyed too much for love and brash recklessness; he didn't think they deserved the chance to ruin anything else.

The words Nate said years ago—_you stole my life_—would never get repeated, but _and you don't just get to abandon it_ seemed to hang from the air, anyway.

Chuck thought he'd chosen easy. He'd thought golden hair and bright laughter would make his life something happy and perfect.

He'd thought he could have it all. Have them both. Sweet and intricate, simple and discerning. He should have realised that Serena's smiles were brightest for the brunette. He should have seen that Blair's most cunning machinations were always for the blonde.

Now they were all ashes. Blair's fragile body disappeared into the earth. And his wife may as well be in the ground with her. At least with Blair he didn't have to watch as the woman he loved wasted away.

_In my head I play your conversations,  
Over and over 'til they feel like hallucinations,  
You know me, I love to lose my mind.  
And everytime anybody speaks your name,  
I still feel the same, I ache, I ache, I ache inside._

An hour before sunrise, his weary limbs shoved the leather bag back into a deep corner of his wardrobe. He crawled under the cold white sheets of his bed, tired arms automatically wrapping around Serena's warm figure.

He held onto his beautiful, empty wife with both arms. He wouldn't let go. He'd pretend. And in the dark, with the deep shadows hiding the bitterness in her lips, he'd tilt his head back, eyes narrowing. And he'd have his illusion.

He wouldn't blink this time.

_I ache, I ache, I ache inside.  
I ache, I ache, I ache inside.  
I ache, I ache, I ache inside_


End file.
